Users with mobile devices are demanding ever increasing amounts of data from the wireless cellular systems to which they connect. This explosive growth has fueled the need for increasing amounts of cellular infrastructure, in particular a dramatically increased density of wireless access points (APs). To attempt to meet these increasing demands, there is a trend to substantially increase the number of available low power small cell APs, e.g., small cell Home eNodeBs (HeNBs). However, as typical cell size decreases, the frequency of handoffs for a user equipment (UE) device between APs tends to increase.
A typical handover, also sometimes referred to as a handoff, involves a relatively high level of control signaling to and from core network elements including a mobility management entity (MME) which normally oversees and keeps track of a mobile device, e.g., mobile node, as it moves through network and a serving gateway (SGW) through which an AP communicates information, about a mobile device being served by AP or as part of providing a service to the mobile device, to the MME and/or other network nodes. While in many systems a mobility management entity is provided with information relating to each handover of a mobile node from one access point to another, as the number of small access points and handoffs increases, the communications load to the mobility management entity may become significant if the MME is notified of all handoffs.
While it may be useful to notify an MME of some handoffs, it may be desirable from a signaling load perspective to hide or otherwise shield an MME from having to be notified of, and process signaling relating to, all handoffs particularly handoffs between small APs corresponding to the same gateway device.
It would be advantageous if new methods and apparatus could be developed which would support at least some hidden handovers, in which handover related control signaling between an MME and/or SGW can be reduced or eliminated as compared to handovers where the MME is fully notified of a handover.